Sacramento Kings coach Dave Joerger grew up in Minnesota, played Division II basketball in the state and coached minor league basketball in North and South Dakota.

He is familiar with the Native American population in that part of the USA, and for years he had considered how he can help children on reservations through basketball.

“As coaches we always want to help and we talk about it at our coaches’ meetings about different ways help different parts of the country and world in youth basketball,” Joerger said. “What if we did something (on reservations) and Jr. NBA became the tool that we could do it with.”

Joerger and the Jr. NBA conducted a camp last weekend at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, S.D.

Nearly 100 boys and girls 10-14 participated in the camp led by Joerger and Kings first-round draft pick Skal Labissiere.

“I don’t want to make an appearance at a camp,” Joerger said. “I’m there doing it, every minute of every day.”

Basketball is an important sport on reservations, and several American Indians play or have played college basketball. Red Cloud boys’ basketball coach and athletic director Christian McGhee said, “Basketball is king on the reservation.”

Basketball’s impact on a reservation and some of the issues Indian Americans face were chronicled in Gary Smith’s fantastic story ‘A Shadow of Nation’ in Sports Illustrated in 1991. He won a National Magazine Award for the story centered around Jonathan Takes Enemy.

McGhee, who grew up in Pine Ridge, played college basketball at Chadron State and then returned to Pine Ridge.

“I felt like that’s my purpose,” he said. “You here it all the time, ‘Get an education and come back and help your people.’ That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

But Pine Ridge faces significant issues. Nearly half of Pine Ridge’s 35,000 residents live below the poverty line, and the employment rate is 21.8%, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

About 53% of its students do not receive a high school diploma, and 99% of the population is affected by substance abuse directly or through a family member, according to HUD.

In 2015, President Obama named Pine Ridge a Promise Zone, which joins the federal government and local leaders to revitalize a community. In Pine Ridge, the goal is to create jobs and improve educational opportunities, increase economic activity and improve public safety, according to HUD.

“More than anything, the camp gives them hope,” McGhee said. “Coach Joerger gave a speech and told the kids, ‘You can be anything you want to be. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, last name, skin color.’ Hope, that would be the word to describe what he gave to the kids.”

Joerger wants to continue the camp.

“It’s a cool deal to be able to go the reservation in what will hopefully be several years of putting on clinics and camps at reservations around the country,” he said.